SIT DOWN, HAVE A DRINK, RELAX.

Safe Rates Fiasco

How did it all come to this. Libs sticking up for labor voting truck drivers, while labor are sticking up for big business.Every owner driver says that this law that labor brought in and are still pushing for is a bad piece of legislation.

It has been wrapped up under a banner of safety and looking after drivers.Pay them more and drivers wont have to work so hard is ridiculous and will do nothing to alter the road toll. Most of the accidents involving trucks are caused by car drivers doing stupid things and most of the trucks that are involved belong to Non owner drivers that this legislation doesn’t affect.

Safe rates legislation was intended at its start was all about the the big 2 Woolies and Coles demanding set delivery times and then penalising drivers if late.For example say a driver had a load from Sydney to the Brisbane distribution centre at he his set a specific unload time within 30 mins.

That is leave Sydney at 12.00am be in Bris at 11.00pm +-30 mins. Miss that slot and you are put in a holding pattern. ,No excuses. Accidents, road closures floods etc, be there at your allocated time or get put into the pattern. Now for drivers with the major companies they were on a hourly rate and got paid for waiting anyway but subbie Owner drivers are paid to deliver the load ,so if they s miss the slot they have to wait …Depending on how urgent they want the goods on the truck you could be stuck there for anything up to 24 hrs. You can,t leave your truck in case you get called up and all this time is unpaid and the return load that you had lined up has gone to someone else because you are stuck in the line, If you can,t find a return load it becomes a expensive trip home.

So labor came up with safe rates and at first was a pretty good piece of legislation.Make Coles and Woolies pay for the truckies time waiting to be unloaded, and take into account road closures, floods etc. all pretty sensible stuff and supported by most people. I can guarantee you that the distribution centres would operate a lot more efficiently if they had to pay for waiting times.

What has come now is nothing like what was intended. Owner drivers AND ONLY OWNER DRIVERS have to charge so called safe rates determined by the RSRT. They have a neat calculator for you to work out how much you have to charge.

I had a little play around with it and If I charged what the calculator tells me to charge I would have gone broke in about a month. There is no allowance for back loads where you just want to cover your fuel expenses to get back to do another full load. Particularity important if you are hauling to north qld were there is a lot of freight going up but not much coming back. I could always rely on the aluminium smelter at Gladstone for a load home as they used Owner drivers all the time to take freight back to Brisbane. I have heard that they will no longer use Owner Drivers because of what they have to charge. Instead the will use toll or one of the other bigger companies that are not affected by safe rates.

And that is the major problem.

Single Owner- Drivers are the only ones affected by this . They have to charge what they are told and if they don,t they face a $52.000 fine.Bigger companies with employed drivers are not affected. They can charge what they want. So Billy Blogs wants someone to take a load from Brisbane to Sydney . He rings a owner driver that he has worked with before and says how much mate? same as last time? Nope says OD will now cost almost double than last time,Billy then rings large company asks how much and is nearly $1000 cheaper. Who do you think will get the job.It is blatantly unfair for owner drivers to be forced to charge exorbitant rates while others are under no such obligation. It will drive single owner operators out of business while increasing business for the others.

Why are only owner drivers being singled out. They have invested heavily in a truck.found work,built up relationships with clients and now they are being forced out of business. This has zero to do with safety and more to do with giving the big boys more work. Owner drivers look after there trucks and take more care of them then payed drivers. If there trucks aren’t working they get no pay while the other drivers just jump in another fleet truck.

As it stands now it looks like the RSRT will be abolished which in my opinion is a good thing. I hope if Labor win the next election that when they get to reintroducing the legislation it is in a vastly different form than what was established . Everyone is concerned about making our roads safer, ,especially the drivers that go out to work every day and night knowing that one mistake can cost them their lives ,but to penalise one section of the industry is not the way to do it.

Sorry to harp back on my point yesterday.
I was unable to respond to some of the comments.

I do not want people to misunderstand my point.

I have absolutely nothing against women wearing a headscarf or hijab.

If that is THEIR choice.

I do not think it can be reasonably argued that the majority of women wearing it are doing so because they have made a conscious decision to wear it.

I do not condone any situation where a man dictates what a woman wears and that includes aussie blokes who will tell their partner things like ‘your not going out dressed like that’ or ‘cover your self up’ etc

I also have a problem with how muslim people claim that they wear the hijab etc as a show of their modesty thus inferring other women who do not wear this religiously and male enforced garment are not modest but that is a whole different topic.

I remember reading Burton’s “Travels to Medina and Mecca”, where he went disguised as a pilgrim…on the journey, he observed that some Muslim women, wearing the full rig but with the eyes exposed, would flirt using their eyes and their covered bodies so provocatively as to remove any doubt as to their direct intentions.

I doubt there exists a woman who has not the capacity to attract a man’s attention with the slightest, but most deliberate movement of either eye contact or body-shape display…..A fair breeze blowing against even the most modestly covered body will reveal the delightful contours disguised beneath.

According to your description of these women, they practically need to be dead so as not to attract men and their overwhelming desires. The covered women are just normal human beings. The attire they’re wearing is not going to change that. Give them a chance instead of seeing them as sex objects. Sorry to be brutal.

One day it just struck me that underpants have a lot of branding on them, with designer brands such as Calvin Klein, but why not nappies? My wife and I both have a background in marketing so we thought about it and decided it was a good plan.

Moving the Australian Cyber Security Centre from the ASIO building in Canberra to an as-yet undisclosed location to make it more accessible to businesses. Cost – $39 million. !!!!!! For moving furniture and equipment across town? Canberra removalists must be raking it in. This is nuts. The unit, formed in 2014, was originally at Canberra UNSW, it moved to the new ASIO building a year ago, now it’s on the move again.

Bananas is to appoint a Cyber Ambassador – no mention of what the pay for that latest ‘jobs for the Friends of the Liberal Party’ will cost. She might appoint Bronnie, who will be a at bit of a loose end soon. Or maybe her latest gigolo would like the job.

Ducky. Re 35 BPM. I have always had a very slow heart rate of abt 35, which was of some benefit as a youngster in athletic or other vigorous pursuits but seems to discombobulate doctors now a days.I don’t think it is of any great concern really.

The Federal Opposition has slammed comments by former Liberal frontbencher Sophie Mirabella, who says a Victorian hospital missed out on $10 million in federal funding because she was not re-elected to the seat of Indi at the last election.

Independent Cathy McGowan won the seat in 2013, ousting Ms Mirabella after more than a decade in the role.

The former MP told a live television audience last night that the voters had cost themselves a multi-million-dollar upgrade to the Wangaratta Hospital.

“I had a commitment for a $10 million allocation to the Wangaratta hospital that if elected I was going to announce a week after the election,” she said.

“That is $10 million that Wangaratta hasn’t had because Cathy got elected.”

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten today said it was a “staggering revelation”.

There are two reasons why the Liberal Party branch members tolerate Turnbull, notwithstanding his views on things like climate change, gay marriage, and the republic which are out of kilter with those of many branch members.

The first is because he once appeared to have a firmer grasp of the economic challenges facing Australia than did Abbott. The second reason rank-and-file members were willing to support Turnbull was because he looked more likely to win the election.

If Turnbull raises taxes and doesn’t cut government spending one of the reasons for him being leader disappears.

Turnbull presented himself as a reformer and an economic liberal. So far, precious little of that has been seen. As diverse as the Liberal Party is, one of the things that unites party members is the Liberals’ commitment to fiscal responsibility. Not many Liberals regard higher taxes as economic reform. There is enormous frustration that, as yet, neither Turnbull nor Morrison look like they have any sort of credible plan to put the budget into surplus, or reduce government debt, or reform the industrial relations system.

If Turnbull loses the election the second reason for supporting him as leader will have turned out to be wrong too.

It’s unfortunate that so many Liberal Party branch members are asking themselves the question not whether the Turnbull government will be re-elected, but whether it deserves to be

That article is a gyp. For weeks now, we’ve heard nothing else from Morrison but “we don’t raise taxes, we find savings”. That’s the Liberal mantra, as much so now under Turnbull as it was under Abbott. This is just Roskam trying to find a way to blame Turnbull for the whole party being a sack of shit.

What Roskam refuses to admit is that you can’t have a budget surplus, or reduce debt, without money coming in. It’s just as important as the amount you expend. And with this ridiculous government adamant on throwing money at waste-of-time muckraking royal commissions, enforcing a pointless and expensive border security/refugee bashing campaign, and committing forces to wars that have nothing to do with us, along with all the other wastefulness, insisting they cut services to afford that stuff is tantamount to national sabotage.

The government is being dragged down because of its IPA-ishness. Demanding that they be more IPA-like to fix it is a moronic idea.

Seeing the news shots of the Queen at Windsor Castle reminded me of a incident when I visited it in the 70ts. Near where the apartments for the staff is a chapel I think is called St George and I went in to have a look.

In the middle of the aisle there is a large black marble slab covering the crypt with the remains of Henry IIIV and what tickled me was that all his wives were interned with him. While I was standing around musing that Henry spent his whole life getting rid of his wives now has to spend eternity with them, a real toff nose guide came and was explaining to two VIP that the marble had just been restored. He explained in a voice that only pommey toffs can master that someone had scratched ” Here lies the remains of the original male chauvinist pig” and that was a disgrace.

I could have told them not to waste their breath. In fact I did tell them not to waste their breath.

After my experience with the “Community Consultation Team” attached to Sydney’s North-West Rail Link – the lies, the half truths and the unmitigated bastardization of the process – before the last NSW state election I wrote that the West Connex community consultation would end up in tears… straight after the election of “Dimples” Baird.

In a nutshell, West-Connex is an extension of Sydney’s M4 Western Freeway (soon to revert to “tollway” status again to pay for West-Connex), that is designed to feed the CBD, Inner West and Inner South of Sydney with hundreds of thousands of cars that have nowhere to go, because the CBD is choked already.

Construction is to be carried out by the usual spivs and shonks so beloved of (I am ashamed to say) both political parties, with the Liberals just being the latest recipients of donations, but by far the largest in history nonetheless. We’ve all seen the sad and sorry story of how the Free enterprise Foundation was set up and used to funnel this money from developers to the Fed and then back to the State Liberal Party, in order to launder it.

In the process of constructing West-Connex, homes along the route that voters have lived in for decades are to be either bulldozed, or (worse) placed behind 16 foot walls next to smoke stacks and interchanges. Parks are to be gutted in the Newtown St. Peters area, and thousands of apartments will be built on any waste land that is left over after construction. You can bet there’ll be plenty of that. The donors have made sure of it.

But it was all sweetness and light before the election. Off the punters trotted, voting for Baird because he was the only game in town. You couldn’t find anyone who’d give you even 10:1 on Labor, so why bother? Sydney is being systematically vandalized with thoughtless erection of unnecessary dwellings and motorways to nowhere. Those dimples sure had a powerful pull.

At the Federal level, the Abbott government tried the same thing, eschewing public transport and rail, in favour of obscene road links built by all the usual suspects. They foisted billions on, for example, the Victorian state Liberal government, partly to offload some cash so they could count it as “Labor debt” by paying the cash on June 30, 2014, but party to fulfill proises made to the corrupt Unaoil, Panama and Caymans crooks who run these construction companies. They are now under investigation by an emasculated ASIC, a dithering AFP and an ATO that has been chopped off at the knees. We wouldn’t want too many bothersome revelations now would we? That might look like “class Warfare” or “envy”. You never know when Labor, in their cheap, ill-fitting suits might get narky.

And so, in today’s SMH there is this story:

Several months after public submissions closed, Planning Minister Rob Stokes has given the green light for construction of twin nine-kilometre tunnels and a motorway interchange at St Peters, in the inner west.

The second stage of the $16.8 billion WestConnex project includes a major interchange at St Peters, in Sydney’s inner west.

The second stage of the tolled motorway project is scheduled to open to motorists in 2019. As many as 143 properties are targeted for partial or full acquisition to allow for the New M5, according to planning documents. The full 33-kilometre WestConnex is to open to traffic in 2023.

As part of the approval, Mr Stokes has set a number of conditions on the New M5 in response to residents’ concerns. The conditions include construction of a new “open space” south of Sydney Park in St Peters. A land bridge is to connect the parks. However, the government has yet to finalise details on the new park, such as its exact size.

Residents opposed to the project also described the planning process and conditions placed on the New M5 as a farce.

“We have seen this before. As far as we are concerned. they have proved that months of consultation are virtually meaningless,” WestCONnex Action Group spokeswoman Pauline Locke said.

“They got a near record number of submissions. It is astounding that the Department of Planning is saying that process is perfectly OK.”

“Community Consultation” is an industry nowadays. they even have a Professorship in it at Western Sydney University (the good Professor lady used to come door-knocking on my own door). It consists of cadres of foot-sloggers traipsing up and down local streets, and batteries of email servers sending totally useless information to locals telling them how much their participation is appreciated and how seriously it will be taken. Tea and scone nights are de rigeur, where flashy models and indecipherable, but immaculately presented drawings are put up on plug boards for the edification of the locals and the amusement of the builders. They are amused because nothing whatsoever will be done to alter anything at all. and they know it.

All this paraphenalia may as well go straight in the bin.

In our own area, regarding the NW Rail Link, we collected a kitty of several thousands dollars for research. We had engineers, railway designers, retired tunnel borers, photographers, landscapers, lawyers, surveyors and all the rest of those professions vital to the structural arts represented in our community. We sought to buy some of the services available around town – whether it be hydrology, geology, surveying or research into land titles. It was all unavailable. Big Construction makes sure that they give out a little work to every firm in town, thus making them unavailable to the self-funded communities for “fact checking” work. To do work for both would be a terrible conflict of interest, they told us, before slamming their doors in our faces.

I have heard similar stories from the residents of Sydney’s Inner-West. These yarns don’t surprise me in the least.

The last election was won on a wave of hysteria and hype about a new Golden Age for Sydney transport. We were to be the envy of the Western World. It was always a lie. If you build a bigger road, you just get more traffic using it. Unless you get out of CBDs, they become slums. The gutted NBN, the Incredible congestion during and after construction and the misery in which inner city inhabitants will live will make that an absolute certainty.

The spivs, shocks, sleeve tuggers, urgers, remittance men and bullshit artists of the monied and business classes are killing not only our cities, but our world with their insane quest for polluting and destroying what heritage we may have managed to salvage from the past.

They are protected and molly-coddled by politicians of both persuasions, with few exceptions. Nothing is sacred. Everything has a price tag.

The irony is that our political betters carry some of the cheapest price tags of all. They sell themselves for a song. A modest brown paper bag full of money from a developer or a constructor can buy some of the classiest arses up for sale. And the people have no say. Literally none.

Isn’t that a lovely picture of a fly-over. Forests of fully-grown threes, pretty lakes, I’m surprised they didn’t give a close-up of happy kids frolicking with puppies in the parks that are never going to exist.

What a shame the traffic-snarled mess soon to be inflicted on St Peters will look nothing like that.

Isn’t that a lovely picture of a fly-over. Forests of fully-grown threes, pretty lakes, I’m surprised they didn’t give a close-up of happy kids frolicking with puppies in the parks that are never going to exist.

You should have seen the “artist’s impression” of our local park after the railway had finished coming through. It had everything in it except Blinky Billl and Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.

Today it is a wasteland, surrounded by a 16 foot high concrete fence enclosing 1.5 acres of mud, concrete and sludge.